


How Can I Help You?

by Ljparis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Grimmauld Place, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 06:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10430913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ljparis/pseuds/Ljparis
Summary: After escaping Azkaban, Sirius finds that he can't accept help from anyone. Not even Remus.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt: Post-Azkaban Remus/Sirius hurt-comfort with Sirius having psychological issues. Remus as Sirius' caretaker, very little or no physical relationship is fine.

Remus took the steps slowly, hoping to quiet the creaks and groans of the narrow house as he walked. He held a tray in one hand, the metal cool against his palm. In his other, he carried a steaming mug of warmed butterbeer, though he knew Sirius would ask for something stronger. That’s what the flask tucked into his cloak pocket was for, and he already decided it would take more than a few words of begging to let Sirius have it. He didn’t like the way Sirius got when he drank, even if it was remarkably more human than without the alcohol.

At the top of the stairs, he juggled the tray, the mug, and the heavy door handle so he could duck into the lone bedroom. It was dark because the curtains were drawn. A thin line of sunlight slipped in through the small space where the curtains met at the middle. The candle that Remus had lit when he slid out of bed less than an hour before had been extinguished. He balanced the tray on the tiny end table and relit the candle with the Muggle cigarette lighter set beside it.

“No light,” came the gravelly voice from the bed. 

Remus ignored the request. The candle, when lit, illuminated the shadowed lump on the bed enough for Remus to tell that Sirius hadn’t moved at all. “I’ve brought you some soup,” he said. “And some warmed butterbeer.”

He received no answer. Sitting carefully on the edge of the bed, he reached a hand out to rub a spot on Sirius’s side, probably along his ribcage. He couldn’t be sure; the heavy blankets and Sirius’s layer of clothes were thick. It was the middle of the summer, and the other man must be sweating. Not that he cared. Sirius didn’t seem to care about anything anymore.

“Sirius, you need to eat,” Remus said.

A snort, but not an answer.

“Please. For me.” Like always, the raspy edge to his voice, the hint of begging, got the lump in the bed to sit up. Or, really, slouch up. 

With the back of his neck against the worn, wooden headboard, Sirius turned to face Remus. The candle lit the side of his face, the light giving him more color in his cheeks than usual. He was gaunt and thin, his cheekbones set high and sucked in, like a Dementor’s face as it sucked out a soul.

“Here.” Remus handed Sirius first the mug of butterbeer. He watched his friend sniff it then lap at it, dog-like, his face twisting in disgust. Sirius pressed it back into Remus’s hand. “That’s how you’re getting it today,” Remus said. “I’m afraid I’m all out of firewhiskey.”

The whites of Sirius’s eyes were yellowed, and he looked, his gaze unfocused, at Remus. “Pocket,” he rasped. “Can smell it.”

Remus frowned, but he removed the flask from his pocket. He was a pushover. He knew it, and Sirius knew it. He uncapped the flask and tipped a small bit of the whiskey into the butterbeer. He glanced at Sirius and didn’t even need to hear the man whisper “more” to know what was being asked. He poured the rest in. “That’s all I’ve got,” he said. “And I won’t buy you anymore.” But they both knew that he would.

Sirius drank the butterbeer quickly, too quickly, and Remus did nothing to stop him. Rather, he set about casting a heating spell on the cooled soup. “You’re going to eat too,” he said. He took the empty mug from Sirius and settled the tray over his lap. “No arguments.”

To his surprise, Sirius didn’t object. He picked up the spoon with shaky fingers. It clanged against the side of the ceramic bowl before he managed to get a decent scoop out and into his mouth. He kept his eyes trained on Remus as he ate, which meant more of the soup dripped off the spoon than made it into his mouth. 

Remus used the cloth napkin sitting on the tray to wipe Sirius’s chin and down his throat. “Here, let me,” he said. He covered Sirius’s trembling hand with his own and pried the spoon away.

“I’m not a fucking invalid,” Sirius said, his voice stronger now that he’d filled his system with alcohol.

Remus’s eyes met his. “I know,” he said. But he still slipped the spoon into the soup and practically force-fed Sirius. “You need to eat, not dribble all down your front. I don’t care if you’re hungry or not.”

“Bastard,” he hissed, but he accepted the soup with a grimace and a dry cough.

When the soup was gone, Remus set it aside. “What do you say we go out for a walk today?” he asked. “Padfoot could find a nice tree to piss on or we could play fetch. How about it?”

Sirius shook his head. 

“You need to get out of the house. Out of this bed, even, would be great.”

He didn’t answer. Also, he didn’t look at Remus but trained his gaze on the covered window. He shoved the blankets off himself, kicking them to the floor. “Let me tell you something, Remus,” he finally said, his voice low. He said Remus’s name like it was a curse word. “I spent thirteen years locked up in a cell with Dementors trying to suck away every happy feeling I’ve ever had. You, us, Jim, Lily, Harry, everything was slowly eroding away, like I was fucking draining, Moony. The memories just fell out of me.”

It wasn’t anything Remus hadn’t heard before, but each time Sirius’s intensity grew.

“The only thing—the only thing—I could think about was that I didn’t do it.” Sirius leaned forward, his lips peeled back in a snarl, his teeth bared. “I didn’t fucking do it.” He poked Remus in the chest, hard, punctuating each word.

“I know,” Remus said.

Sirius stared at him. “You do now, but you didn’t, did you?” His voice was quiet, raspy from disuse. “You were one of them, weren’t you Remus? Thinking that I did it. That I could actually betray Lily and James. You thought that because of my mum, right? And her batshit crazy ideals. I should have been a Slytherin, right Moony? Like my goddamn bastard of a brother? You thought I wore Voldemort’s Mark, didn’t you?” He tore his sleeve away from his forearm. “I’m not a fucking Death Eater, Remus!”

Remus’s heart thumped hard in his chest, so loudly that he was certain Sirius could hear it too. His throat tightened, making it difficult to breathe easily. He started to shake his head, but objecting, defending himself, it would be a lie. He had believed Sirius capable of all of that. He had believed Sirius was a murderer. Three times over of just their friends. More of all those innocent Muggles.

“I didn’t want to,” Remus whispered.

“Well, you did. You had to see that rat on the map, in the flesh to believe I didn’t fucking kill him, didn’t you?”

He winced and moved off the bed, pulling his cloak around himself even though it was hot in the dark room. 

Sirius blew out the candle with a puff of his cheeks. “Get out of here,” he said sharply. “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“I’m not leaving you, Sirius,” Remus said.

“Get out.” Each word was a curse, a deep guttural curse that sounded hollow and broken in the dark and otherwise silent room.

Remus hesitated. 

“Now.” The command was weak, tired. Sirius coughed and gagged once, gurgling. 

He stood without speaking about an arm’s-reach away from the bed. His werewolf’s senses could smell that Padfoot needed a bath. Sirius didn’t get out of bed, and he’d let Remus sponge bathe him two or three days before. Remus would have to do it again. He narrowed his eyes and could just make out the twisted lump of Sirius on the bed.

“Sirius,” he whispered. “I—”

But this time when he didn’t get an answer, he knew it was because Sirius had worn himself out. His eyes twitched to hear the unsteady, exhausted breathing. He had fallen asleep, suddenly, like a narcoleptic. It happened more often than Remus would like, but he knew it was something Sirius needed. 

He had hoped Sirius would have gotten better sooner rather than later. It had already been three and a half months, and nothing had changed. 

Remus gathered up the tray and empty mug and set them on the floor by the door so that he wouldn’t forget to take them out of the room when he left. He also didn’t want Sirius’s nightmares to cause the flailing that they often did and Sirius knock his arms into them.

Then Remus took a seat on the high-backed wood chair in the corner, where he could watch Sirius and be close enough to comfort at the first hint of a nightmare.


End file.
